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In Asuncion, Paraguay, Small-Scale Charms and a Complex History

By Seth Kugel April 16, 2013 5:12 pmApril 16, 2013 5:12 pm

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Roasting a chipa caburé, a type of cake, in a tatakua, or traditional oven.Credit Seth Kugel

Cooking a chipa caburé in a tatakua is surprisingly like roasting a marshmallow in a campfire. After wrapping dough around a stick, you place it just barely inside the edge of the domed brick oven and rotate it slowly. Get too close to the wood fire and the exterior burns; rotate it just enough and it browns beautifully as the inside cooks through, ready to be slid off the stick and eaten hot.

I roasted my first ever chipa caburé – a corn, cheese and manioc starch cake the size of a corn dog with a doughnut hole where the dog would be – on a recent Saturday in the home of María Jacinta Leguizamón. Doña Jacinta, as she is known, lives in Asunción, the rarely visited capital of the rarely visited (and landlocked) country of Paraguay. On weekends she runs an informal prepared-foods service out of her humble home for the Loma San Jerónimo neighborhood, selling traditional foods like chicharo huiti (pork meat coated in corn meal) and sopa paraguaya, a tender cornbread. Nearby were the tatakua, a couple of gobbling turkeys and a slew of family members. “She’s anti-commercial,” her daughter-in-law, Zunilda Arce, a pediatrician, told me. “She does it the way you’re supposed to do it.”

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Food prepared at the home of María Jacinta Leguizamón in Asunción.Credit Seth Kugel

I was not there by accident: Loma San Jerónimo is the site of a nascent project by Paraguay’s tourism ministry and local residents to promote the neighborhood, which somehow escaped the grid system that characterizes downtown Asunción, all but eliminating vehicular traffic and making its alleyways and passages perfect for kids to play and visitors to wander. Houses have been painted bright and inviting colors, cute signs put up and a weekend street market organized. (See their Facebook page or e-mail lomasanjeronimo@gmail.com for more information.)

Cuzco and Rio de Janeiro need not fear: Asunción, a city of about 500,000, is not poised to become the next tourism capital of South America. But it is a fascinating window into Paraguayan history and culture. Over the last 150 years, the country has been beaten up by two punishing wars and one wicked dictatorship, but has emerged with a fierce and peculiar independent spirit represented by (among other things) a national indigenous language — Guaraní — that just about everyone mixes liberally with Spanish. The city (and country) make for an interesting side trip from Buenos Aires or Iguazú Falls — or, though it would be a bold call, a trip of its own for travelers who prefer their destinations off-beat, unexplored, mighty friendly and shockingly inexpensive. Asunción was a bargain in just about every way imaginable (except for the $160 entry visa for Americans); for starters, its buses cost 2,000 guaraníes, or 50 cents at 4,000 guaraníes to the dollar, and get you just about anywhere.

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At Bartholu’s, sandwiches go for less than $5, and diners can customize them with a long row of toppings.Credit Seth Kugel

But it is not a journey of the obvious. A good orientation involves reading a little history – you know, history, the part of the guidebook you usually skip past – and soaking up two powerful museums that go a long way to explaining Paraguayan identity.

The Museo del Barro is unlike any museum I’ve ever visited, in that I wasn’t bored for a second. It features three completely different kinds of Paraguayan (and to some extent, broader Latin American) art – contemporary, indigenous and rural – scattering and juxtaposing them in such a surprisingly fun way that looking at a floor plan is counterproductive: I turned the corner from ancient indigenous ceramics and stared at contemporary artists’ takes on the Stroessner dictatorship; then I was back looking at 20th-century indigenous headdresses and before long turned into a hallway of religious art from the 18th century of the Franciscan and Jesuit missions. The upper floor is, in parts, little more than a metal balcony, so at some points a glance downward brings you back (or forward) centuries. (Admission is free, although the museum is hard to find, so print out or e-mail yourself a map before you venture out on the No. 30-2 bus.)

In complete contrast (though also free) stands the Museo de las Memorias: Dictadura y Derechos Humanos (Museum of Memories: Dictatorship and Human Rights, at Avenida Chile 1072), which despite its complicated name is a bare-bones institution in the city center. It is housed in the same unassuming building that served as a prison and torture chamber for thousands of political opponents of the Paraguayan government under dictator Alfredo Stroessner, who took over in a coup in 1954, was a Cold War ally of the United States in the ’60s and ’70s, and finally was exiled in 1989. (He died in Brazil in 2006.)

The agency that once ran the building was called, in appalling euphemism, the National Directorate of Technical Affairs (or La Técnica); and the museum is essentially the result of the 1992 discovery of its “Terror Archives” by the former prisoner and human rights activist Martín Almada. Among the displays are torture instruments and documents showing the U.S. military’s involvement in training La Técnica’s officers. A few cells have been carefully reconstructed and the caretaker and tour guide Martín Ibarrola is able to speak with authority on which rooms were used for what. Like so many tourist attractions I visited in Paraguay, I was the only visitor. (Mr. Ibarrola does not speak English, and displays are also mostly in Spanish, so be sure to bring along an interpreter if you need one.)

Though Asunción is not nearly as pretty as some other South American cities, the downtown area is very walkable and features a handful of worthwhile sights, especially if the weather is nice. (Avoid the punishingly hot Southern summer – our winter – at all costs.) Occasionally you’ll come upon nice but frequently run-down colonial buildings, and catch indications of immigrant populations: I stopped in at the Michael Bock Deutsche Backerei for a delicious plum tart (6,000 guaraníes) and bought a water in a despensa (corner store) from a Korean man who was blasting opera so loudly over the speakers that he had to turn it down when I walked in.

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A common scene in Asunción: preparing tereré, a tea-like drink served ice cold.Credit Seth Kugel

But mostly things have a distinctly Paraguayan feel, like in the vast Mercado 4, a teeming, claustrophobic and slightly seedy central market where vendors chat in Guaraní as they sell everything from medicinal herbs to cheap sneakers to cow pancreas. Or federal government buildings so unobtrusive that you practically pass by ministries without even noticing (even the presidential palace is so lightly guarded you’d be forgiven for thinking it is just an impressive historic mansion).

And there are the Paraguayans themselves, including people everywhere hauling ubiquitous thermoses and cups with attached metal straws. Veteran South American travelers might think these are for yerba mate, the hot tea Argentines, Uruguayans and southern Brazilians are obsessed with. But in most cases it is tereré, another tea-like drink, but one taken freezing cold. (Those thermoses are full of ice.) You may be offered some from a local – germaphobes beware – but you can also have some of your own by renting a pitcher and cup at the north or south entrance to Plaza Uruguaya for 4,000 guaraníes.

Of course, there is more to sample than tea. A good bet for local specialties is Ña Eustaquia, where ridiculously good fruit juices and smoothies go perfectly with two traditional hearty soups: a creamy, well-spiced caldo de surubi, or catfish soup (35,000 guaraníes), or vori vori de pollo, a chicken soup with little balls made of cornmeal and cheese (23,000 guaraníes).

In a splurge (by Paraguayan standards) I ate another night in the elegant (by my standards) old-school Bar San Roque, where a sophisticated version of the traditional bife kogua – a soupy beef stew loaded with vegetables and topped delicately with a runny egg – came with fried manioc and nice bread basket; I added a glass of Chilean wine and a plate of budín, the local take on flan, and ended up spending only 80,000 guaraníes before tip, just $20.

For a great lomito, or beef sandwich (like its continental neighbors, Paraguayans are very into beef), venture a bit out of the center to Bartholu’s (corner of Carlos Antonio Lopez and De La Conquista), where you get one made to order for 15,000 guaraníes and can load it with endless sauces and toppings; bowls of pickles, beets and carrots line the counter.

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Asunción, as seen from the small rural community of Chaco-i.Credit Seth Kugel

Another advantage to Asunción’s relatively small scale: getaways are easy. I took a very quirky afternoon trip to Chaco-i, a tiny rural community a quick 3,500-guaraní ride in a picturesque putt-putting wooden boat across the Paraguay River. There, you can hire similar boats to take you on river trips, but during my visit it was rainy. So I broke out my umbrella and explored the area with a very temporary travel companion, a German woman named Julia who was the only other foreigner in the boat. (Most passengers were locals going to and from work or school.)

The community is sparsely populated; chickens, horses and cows roam the muddy streets within view of the city skyline. In front of one of the homes along the shore I spotted another tatakua (that traditional oven) with hens perched on top and stopped to take a picture. Julia made conversation with the family matriarch, Doña Felicita – trailed by her grandchildren – who told us about raising chickens, including how she dates her hens’ eggs the day they are laid with a magic marker. To our surprise, she gave a resting hen a light kick, revealing a brood of tiny yellow chicks, and one of her granddaughters picked one up for us to hold. A tour of a rural chicken coop practically in the shadow of the nation’s capital – it all struck me as very Paraguayan.

IF YOU GO

You can fly directly to Asunción from Miami on American Airlines, but a better idea is making Paraguay part of a longer trip to South America. I flew in from São Paulo, Brazil, for cheap: $250 round trip on TAM (Brazil’s Gol also flies the route). Bring $160 in cash to buy an entry visa at the airport; actually, bring plenty of cash, since A.T.M. machines charge ludicrous fees and changing money is easy.

Aside from the newest, chicest spots, it’s hard to spend $100 a night on lodging in Asunción, breakfast included; single travelers will be happy to hear they will get discounts on hotel rooms. I tested three places at three levels. Highest was the Gran Hotel de Paraguay, at 297,500 guaraníes (about $75) a night for an old school stalwart whose rooms are admittedly outdated but whose grounds are gorgeous. (I got a 15 percent discount by taking the bus from the airport rather than the “included” pickup.) An excellent middle ground was the Hotel Palmas del Sol, a modern-looking whitewashed hotel near the city center with a great breakfast of fruit, coffeecakes and decent coffee. I paid 175,500 guaraníes ($44) for a single. And Asunción has several hostels. I stayed a night for 50,000 guaraníes ($12.50) in La Casita de la Abuela, a friendly place that opened last July in the owner’s grandmother’s former home.

Correction: April 17, 2013An earlier version of this post misspelled the name of a museum guide in Asunción. It is Ibarrola, not Ybarola.